noelmm

We just use a standard SLR camera on a tripod. When it's requested we set the camera up somewhere suitable in the room and leave it and collect it after and simply transfer the file to our SharePoint area, there's no point in over complicating things like this if it's only going to be needed occasionally.

We're going to look into read, write Gold soon as it does text to speech but also does narration. While we don't need narration at the moment we will next year. The license is either an annual individual or site license, if I remember correctly once you have 6 or 7 users the site license works out cheaper.

I've had this before and just needed to add the drivers into the boot drive.

Does ExamWritePad have real aloud and dictation functions and if so does it need an internet connection?

We have generic accounts for supply staff to access the MIS. Each morning our cover supervisor will assign any classes required to the generic accounts, this allows the supply staff to log in and take a register and log and behaviour events etc. Without this level of access, surely we couldn't expect them to do their job fully.

It sounds like you may be better off writing a report to extract the data. We run a custom report for our data extract and then use that to upload into Sisra.

Off the top of my head you can either export the data from assessment sheets if you only need one or two, or you can do this via the View/Amend Assessment data in the Assessment module.

We have several generic accounts for short-term cover accessing the network with read-only access to a Sharepoint share where any set cover work is stored. We also have several generic accounts to access our MIS to allow registers to be taken but any other permissions are locked down. This approach works well from an IT point-of-view and means we don't have any permission issues or potential gdpr concerns over cover staff being able to access unnecessary data. Long-term cover are treated in the same way as standard staff and are given access to system when they have completed inductions etc.

As you already have Bromcom have you looked at their room booking in the Diary module, we don't use it so I cannot say how good it is but it might be an option.

We've moved away from Pearson onscreen testing so haven't used it for a while but I remember, much like @themightymrp that we had a single installer which created installers for the admin machine, invigilator and testing machines. I think the installers were created on the local C drive where you run the initial installation file, using any other files for installation failed to work.

Hi, @Tech_Wanderer, you'll find so many supportive users here, always willing to help where they can.

The network equipment belongs to the school as we have just refreshed it over the last 2 years, any onsite servers etc are owned by the LA and provided under the current agreement. Our entire domain structure is owned by the LA, active directory etc all owned and managed by the LA. The LA support is actually quite good, however our BM feels we would get better service elsewhere (I'm not convinced of this at the moment)and cheaper, that remains to be seen at the moment. Unfortunately our LA is a whole package, you buy into it or you don't, the only things that can be opted out of are thing like Impero, items considered not required to run a domain/school.

Currently our LA control everything apart from our MIS and Printing solution (they do control the print server the solution is installed on. the 3-5 year time frame is simply to allow us to build our skills etc, before I came to the school I had access to and managed servers etc but in the last 10 years this hasn't been the case and things have moved on since then. While we would ideally like to slowly migrate services, we can't as everything is part of a contract and if we were to leave everything stops. I've told our BM that the process will take a while so for now we have signed in to the LA for 1 more year while we speak at other potential suppliers (we're just speaking to one at the moment but till introduce more in the next couple of months) and start a conversation with them. My approach moving forward will be to simply provide a list of services that I know we get as part of the LA (obvious things like internet, firewalls, filtering, network management, helpdesk support etc.) and let the potential suppliers quote on that. Thanks for the advice etc with this.

The potential supplier wants to quote based on what we have, even though we don't own it. After several emails yesterday I think they now understand that they need to quote for a brand new setup (this has been requested on more than 1 occasion already) and will begin to look into that. We've just signed in with our LA for another year but I plan to sit down with them in a few months and get a full breakdown (if one exists), showing what we have, at the very least we need that to compare to any future suppliers. Thanks everyone for your comments and help I'll feed back to my BM, now at least I know I'm on the right track.

Our business manager doesn't get a full breakdown as there is no option to opt out of part of the core service so the LA don't produce one. The hardware is provided by the LA and is only looked at if failures occur, at that point it is repaired or replaced with whatever they have on hand at the time.

Hi @PotNoodleTech, thanks for the info. My name is correct but I don't work in Stafford so I should be good.

Thanks @Rob_D. What you have is very similar to what I was expecting to need.

Currently we have O365 and we're in the process of moving all files across so storage isn't too much of a concern. Our LA doesn't provide a specific breakdown of what they provide, it's simply a package based on users on roll. Some of the add-ons such as backups, Impero, filtering (smoothwall) and Salamander I'm aware of, and have factored that in during the conversation with a potential supplier but I'm not certain what else we would need to at least match what we currently have. Can anyone give e an example of what they have? Are your servers virtualised (if so are you hosting them onsite)? What spec are your servers? This may raise more questions but hopefully it will give me a starting point for things I haven't considered.

Hi all, Currently all of our IT is provided and managed by our local authority. I have been asked to look into what it would take to move to another supplier, with the end goal of bringing this in house in 3-5 years, however I have been asked to not let our LA know our thought process (we may decide to stay with the LA) at this time. I am in contact with a supplier who is asking some questions that I cannot currently answer without asking the LA. I have been asked to provide a breakdown of the servers we have so that they can quote based on this. I have explained to them that the quote doesn't need to be based on what we have and that we may want to go down the route of virtual machines etc. but they still requite this information. Below is a list of servers I know we have along with their specs. I don't know what other servers we have or would need. Can some of you give me an idea of what we would need, at the moment just in terms of servers (uses and specs)? Print server: Processor: Intel Xeon CPU E5-2680 V4 @ 2.40GHz 2.40 GHz Memory: 8GB Storage: C drive - 90GB. Data Drive - 150GB OS: Server 2022 standard Domain Controller: Make: Dell Power Edge 1950 Processor: Unknown Memory: 4GB Storage: 2 x 500GB SAS drives (assume in Raid) Deployment: Make: Dell Power Edge R910 Processor: Unknown Memory: Unknown Storage: 2 x 73GB SAS drives (assume in Raid) and 4 x 600GB SAS (assume in Raid) Thanks all

I think this pulls from the config section fund here Config > Administration > Core Details

Torque Pro is very good for the average user with any compatible Bluetooth dongle from Amazon. The only thing I've noticed about it, it doesn't always read the manufacturer specific codes compared to my other diagnostic tools.

We're seeing the issue when using Chrome, Edge appears to work though and clearing the browser cache for chrome has worked for some.

If your LA aren't happy with what you have in place, I would ask them what they suggest. As other have said I would use a VPN with RDP (that's what our LA uses), I would definitely use a work device and not my own personal device.

We have had several reports of staff not being able to log a behaviour event through the register, the page just hangs. We reported something similar a few weeks ago to Bromcom and the problem seemed to go away for couple of weeks. The whole system now just seems slow.

I've done this before and as others have said, the feedback you get isn't always helpful. What we have now done is setup a focus group, one teacher from each department to meet with each half-term so we can get constructive feedback and see how we can move forward. This focus group is also being used to train the rest of their departments on new technologies, this allows them to see see different sides of the technology that we as non-teachers may not see.